She picked up the phone and called the Ninth Precinct, but not to talk to her husband.
“Captain Reilly, please…Jimmy? It’s Giulia. You know how you’re always trying to lure me into working for you? Let me tell you about my temp.”
Six
Giulia finished explaining to Jimmy what an asset Jane would be to the Ninth Precinct. It wasn’t even one thirty and her “Must Complete Now” task list had quadrupled. Well, complaining wouldn’t get anything done. Lunch would. She got up for probably the last time today and opened her door.
“Anyone going—Hi, Jane.”
Sidney was eating something natural on whole wheat at her desk. Zane was gone. Jane had a brown bag in hand.
“Bad timing. Not you, Jane. My multitasking. What’s up?”
“Developments on the insurance fraud case.”
Giulia waved her through the open doorway. “My office? I just need to get some lunch up here.”
Jane followed Giulia in and closed the door. Giulia called downstairs to Common Grounds, the coffee and lunch shop, and ordered the special with a Coke.
“I’m all yours, Jane. Go ahead and eat.”
This Jane was slightly mellower than the Jane of three months ago who’d bristled at any perceived slight and plastered makeup over her tattoos. She stood taller and smiled now and then. Giulia attributed that to steady employment and Jane’s discovery of an unexpected talent at shadowing people.
Today emerald streaks embellished her black hair. Her green sleeveless shirt picked up the highlights. She pulled a four-by-six spiral-bound notebook out of her backpack.
“I won’t eat until I report, Ms. D. I need my notes to summarize. Our middle-aged husband went to his stockbroker job as usual. His charming wife entertained guests, relaxed in her garden, and otherwise was an ornament to the neighborhood.”
Giulia frowned. “That’s no help to us.”
“It gets better. Tonight they’re invited to a political fundraiser. Three hundred bucks a plate. If she’s going to wear her supposedly stolen diamonds, it’ll be then.”
“We need pictures.”
“Already on it. I borrowed a swanky party dress from my sister. You should see the updo wig I found. I look positively middle class in it.”
“Make sure you keep track of your hours. I’m sure you’ve worked more than twenty this week.”
“You bet.” Jane hesitated. “Would you write a reference letter for me? When we finish this insurance fraud business I’ve got to start job hunting again.”
“Of course. You’ve been terrific. I’m going to miss you.”
Jane smiled. “Zane gave me an open-ended invitation to join his gamer crowd. You’ll still hear my name once in a while.”
Sidney knocked and opened. “Nine bucks with tip, please.” She set a Coke and a plastic container with a sandwich and salad on Giulia’s desk.
Giulia handed her the money.
“I’m out of here,” Sidney said. “Jessamine has a checkup tomorrow morning, so I’ll be in after that.”
“Sounds good,” Giulia said to her, then to Jane: “Go eat. Shoo. Excellent work. I’ve got a thousand items to plow through and no time for fun things like conversation.” As Jane opened the door, Giulia called her back. “I’m going out of town early tomorrow afternoon. Can you be in here by ten to let me know what happened at the fundraiser?”
Jane wilted, but rallied a moment later. “I’ll set two alarms.”
Giulia ripped several pages from the legal pad and spread them out on her desk. One she labeled “Cheating Husband,” the next “Insurance Fraud,” the third “Diocesan Retainer,” and the fourth “Haunted Lighthouse.”
She stabbed a plastic fork into the Caesar salad. “I need to clone myself.”
Since that wasn’t about to happen in the near or far future, she turned her usual business methods upside down and started out of order with the Diocesan Retainer.
Okay, she’d lied about not getting out of her chair. To take care of that item, she needed the file from Sidney’s desk. Chewing on a bite of ham and pepper jack on wheat, she found the fluorescent green folder in the middle slot of Sidney’s inbox.
Back at her own desk, she read the two-page contract twice. Ever since she and Frank had quietly taken care of a massive drug-dealing scandal at Giulia’s old convent, the Diocese of Pittsburgh had made DI their preferred digger of dirt. It made perfect sense to convince the Diocese to agree to a monthly retainer.
Zane returned. Giulia called him in. He put on an innocent expression when he saw the open green folder.
“Say it,” Giulia said.
“You’ve been spinning your wheels on the final retainer version for days,” he said. “You don’t usually take this long to make a decision.”
“I don’t trust the Diocese’s lawyer. He was in the first senior class I taught thirteen years ago. He was underhanded at age seventeen and he didn’t seem to have changed much at our retainer negotiation meetings.”
“You trust our lawyer, don’t you?”
“I have to. He’s one of my brothers-in-law.” Giulia sat back in her chair. “Besides, Mom Driscoll would never raise a dishonest son.”
“You married into a useful family.” Zane crossed his arms. “It resolves to one question: Do you have any reason not to sign this retainer?”
Giulia hesitated only a fraction of a second. “No.” She signed all three copies of the last page and jogged all the pages together. “This is as good as we can make it. The church might think it’s getting the better part of this deal, but they don’t have to make a budget stretch to cover rent, salaries, and health insurance every month. A guaranteed monthly income is like having a birthday present every thirty days.” She handed the folder to Zane. “Please write a cover letter and courier this to the Bishop’s office for their countersignatures.”
“Your hardworking staff agrees about the monthly birthday present.” Zane patted the folder and headed to his computer.
Next ball in her juggling performance: The cheating scumbag, also known as Flynt. She connected her phone to her computer and uploaded the surreptitious photos she’d taken after her phony job interview.
Flynt leaning on the receptionist’s desk as Giulia crossed the lobby. Her own fingers as she palmed the phone for a better angle. Flynt handing the receptionist a cup of tea. She’d tried to refuse it but he pushed it into her hand, prolonging the contact of his fingers on top of hers.
Giulia repeatedly held down the button to take several pictures in rapid succession. Her targets shifted in and out of frame as she’d pretended to search for her car keys. Flynt then pulled his own undercover stunt. He appeared to walk away, but as he passed behind the receptionist he trailed his fingers up her arm and rested his hand on the back of her neck.
“Thank you, Saint Veronica.” Giulia enlarged one beautiful, slightly off-kilter picture of Flynt’s middle finger stroking up into the receptionist’s hairline.
She opened the ongoing report for her client, Flynt’s wife, and inserted that photo uncropped.
Not enough.
She checked the spreadsheet she’d created of Flynt’s usual weekly schedule. Bingo. Golf every Friday morning. If Flynt didn’t change his pattern, she could wrap up this case tomorrow afternoon. The pantyhose-and-suit torture would not be squandered.
Her fingers pounded the keys as she summarized five weeks of work, inserting placeholders on the last two pages for tomorrow’s coup de grâce photos.
Zane poked his head around the doorframe. “Ready for DI’s version of The Scoop?”
Seven
Giulia held her pen ready to write. “Let’s see. What would make that slimy TMZ-wannabe local TV show sit up and beg? Rowan is an undercover Homeland Security agent and Jasper’s prosthetic hand secretly
records every Tarot reading for code words?”
Zane stared at her, unblinking, for a long second.
For the umpteenth time, Giulia reminded herself that Zane was still adjusting to working in a casual atmosphere with humans, not in telemarketing hell micromanaged by angry demons recently passed over for promotion.
“You have to admit The Scoop would kill during sweeps week with that story. What did you discover?”
After one more second, Zane said, “Rowan’s been married four times. Number three is the real reason the mall developer hiked the rent to force all those small businesses to shut down. The developer claimed Rowan stole her husband, so she convinced her company to locate the mall right on top of Rowan’s business.”
Giulia held up a finger, finished a sentence, and said, “A little tame for The Scoop.”
“That was Act One. In Act Two, Rowan’s husband divorces her and remarries the developer.”
“This is where I say that perhaps a good Tarot reader might have seen this coming if she ever did a reading for herself.” Giulia made a wry face. “But that would be judgmental.”
Zane winked. Giulia considered that a sign of hope.
“Rowan moved to Cottonwood after the divorce,” he continued, “and opened the shop across the street with her nephew, Jasper.”
“Wait. You said four husbands.”
“I did. Rowan’s fourth is one of Jasper’s fellow explosive experts who now runs an Army-Navy surplus store unhindered by his artificial legs, plural. Before you ask, he’s ten years older than Jasper. Rowan is seventy-four. Jasper is thirty.”
“True love?”
“More like true beef bourguignon. I compared his photo in the newspaper at his store’s grand opening with one of his Memorial Day TV commercials. He’s at least forty pounds heavier now.”
“Zane, you made a joke. No, no, stop looking guilty. I’m always pleased when you get a little more comfortable working here.”
The blush stuck on Zane’s cheeks. “So anyway, Rowan’s still paying off three separate divorce lawyer debts. The mortgage on their house is in her husband’s name, but the payments are on time.”
“I disagree with your earlier assessment.” Giulia smiled up at him. “The Scoop likes dirt. This skirts the edges of heartwarming.”
He shook his head. “On the surface. He drinks. She’s got a bunch of rich women on the hook.”
Giulia reread the last paragraph. “As con artists go, I’ve seen worse.”
Zane’s eyebrows rose. “If this really was an episode of The Scoop, everything I’ve described would turn out to be the front of Rowan and Jasper’s two-man operation to bleed those rich women.”
Giulia did not let one centimeter of her internal grin appear. “Does your assessment arise from a new film noir game on Steam or too many late nights of CSI reruns?”
He ducked his head, hiding his eyes beneath his hair. “Binge-watching Columbo on Netflix.”
Giulia did chuckle at that. Zane’s throaty baritone could double for Columbo as well as Sam Spade.
“Okay, then. Whether Rowan is a gifted Tarot reader or a fraud is irrelevant for our purpose. She has enough financial reasons to be frightening her old sorority sister into abandoning her waterfront property. What about the nephew? Is he parlaying his war hero status into a charming and sympathetic lure for rich women and Mac as well?”
Zane rocked one hand back and forth. “Still working on him. He’s for real, though: Has a Purple Heart. His debt is minimal. His degree is in engineering, but he’s never used it. No significant other. He hunts in season and knows a lot about single malts. Sees a VA shrink for PTSD.”
Giulia frowned. “Good-looking, heroic, eligible male with minimal flaws. No wonder his aunt’s shop has giggling teenage girl clientele.” She tapped her pen on the yellow paper. “I’m not cynical enough to believe a war hero is running a con with his eccentric elderly aunt. But I might have to be.”
“Let me dig some more,” Zane said. “How long will you be here tomorrow?”
“At least through lunch. The stars need to align for me to catch Flynt with his current mistress tomorrow morning, so I can finish that report, add pictures, and call in Flynt’s wife. Plus Jane’s insurance fraud case, plus anything else that may walk through the door.”
“At least it’s never boring,” Zane said.
Eight
In the backyard after supper, Giulia told Frank about her new client and the impending road trip.
“A bed and breakfast?” Frank set two beers on a small square table between two lawn chairs. “Those places are crawling with snowbirds and tourists.”
“Snowbirds go to bed early. Tourists go out drinking.” Giulia unreeled the hose and started watering her tomato plants.
“True, but it’ll be crammed with atmosphere and kitsch.” He started on his beer. “Like candles and doilies and antimacassars, whatever they are.”
Giulia laughed. “B&Bs are not old ladies’ retirement homes.” She tugged on the hose. “Could you unkink for me?”
Frank leaned over as far as possible without leaving his chair, tilting it on two legs, and snagged the bent hose with three fingers. He whipped it around itself as his chair thunked back onto the grass. “There you go.”
“That was either quite clever or quite lazy.” She turned the water onto the peppers. “Thank you.”
“Clever, of course.”
The three preschool-aged boys next door splashed in an inflatable pool. In the long backyard behind both houses, two Boston Terriers yipped at the hose, and the boys streaked back and forth along the chain link fence, chased each other, and began the cycle over again.
Giulia looked in the bushes for fireflies, but it wasn’t dark enough yet.
“The peppers are too small to be any use,” Frank said as she finished watering the rest of the garden and sat in the other chair.
“It’s only June. Wait a few weeks. Full-grown peppers don’t appear in the grocery store by magic.”
They drank beer in silence as the neighborhood’s evening rituals progressed. At seven fifteen the terriers zipped into their front yard and commenced their nightly barking trash-talk with the Rottweiler from the end of the block as his owner walked him. The rolls and clacks of a street hockey game interspersed with tapped car horns and the players booing the drivers, followed by laughter and more clacks and rolls.
Any leftover tension slipped from Giulia’s shoulders.
“Scheduling everything is my real concern about three or four or five days at Stone’s Throw,” she said. “Can Zane and Sidney handle it with Sidney and Jane still both at part-time? When we need to connect, how good is the Wi-Fi out by the lake? People don’t come to a pricey vacation house to check Facebook.”
“They’d Instagram.”
“True. Good publicity for the B&B. Which reminds me.” She went back inside and returned with her iPad. “Let’s see what Trip Advisor has to say.”
Frank sighed. “Woman, you’re off the clock.”
“We are researching a vacation spot.” She arched her brows at him.
“At least I knew you were a workaholic when I married you.”
“And I knew you were a sports fiend. They cancel each other out.” She typed in the name. “Whoa. There’re a whole bunch of places named ‘Stone’s Throw.’ Want to spend a week at a jewelry store or a recording studio or any one of a dozen bar and grill joints? Don’t answer that.”
“That name is cute.” His face expressed the opposite opinion.
“Agreed. Here’s our Stone’s Throw on Trip Advisor from Halloween of last year: ‘Loved the haunted lighthouse tour and the antique decorations. The themed activities were fun without being cutesy.’” She scrolled down. “Another one, same week: ‘The decorations and activities were corny but
the owner gets points for enthusiasm. Would not return that week, but would any other week.’”
“Why book Halloween week if you’re not going to get into the spirit of the thing?”
“Perhaps they expected something quaint and Victorian with period costumes and a taffy pull. A third review says: ‘I lost a year of my life between the haunted tour and whatever was rigged up in the attic. Didn’t sleep a wink on October 31. Loved it and will return next year.’”
Frank stopped at the last swallow of his beer. “Why do you have that look?”
“She’s added a weekly séance to the amenities. All season, not just at Halloween.”
“Someone wants to make sure the regulars aren’t bored.”
“Someone is hooked on psychics.” Giulia sipped her beer. “Ugh. It’s getting warm.” She finished the last two inches. “Can’t let a Murphy’s Irish Red go to waste.”
The terriers ran into their backyard, woofing and nipping each other. The mother next door stood up from her chair next to the pool. The kids splashed onto the grass, whining but obedient.
The foghorn-on-steroids noise of a vuvuzela echoed up and down the street.
“It must be eight o’clock,” Frank said. “The younger Templeton brat is right on time. Next on the program: Mama Templeton.”
A woman’s high-pitched voice: “Time to come in, Rupert!”
Frank said, “Three. Two. One.”
A young boy’s voice: “Five more minutes, Ma!”
Giulia said, “Cue the next vuvuzela blast.”
The horn shattered the evening again.
“I’ll get you, Roland.”
The boy’s voice again. “All right, Ma.”
“Life imitates Mary Poppins,” Giulia said.
“Heaven forbid. Can you picture that little monster with a cannon?”
“Not if I want to sleep at night.” She leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. “Coming back to the scheduling. I plan to wrap up two separate cases tomorrow, assuming cooperation from thieves and scumbags. We’ve got three other active cases, with Sidney and Jane both part-time for two more weeks. Sidney hasn’t taken on this level of responsibility before.”
Second To Nun (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 2) Page 3